NEW YORK — With mass transit still snarled by the surge of seawater inundating neighborhoods and train tunnels, the Broadway League, representing 40 theaters in the city, opted to pull the plug on performances Tuesday, Oct. 30, extending the storm-related shutdown that kept stages dark Sunday, Oct. 28 and Monday, Oct. 29. Among the cancelled productions for all three days: Broadway’s The Book of Mormon, Once and Mama Mia! and off-Broadway shows including Stomp, Bad Jews, Disgraced and Golden Child. At Carnegie Hall, appearances by the Tokyo String Quartet on Oct. 28 and Jadranka Jovanovic Oct. 29 were also canceled.
The closings were not unprecedented — the threat posed by Hurricane Irene in August 2011 also led to a near-total shutdown of Broadway productions. But the necessary delay until Wednesday extended the financial impact on the Great White Way. The only silver lining is that many Broadway shows had been scheduled to be dark on Monday anyway.
The storm, dubbed by some as “Frankenstorm” both for its freakish combination of tropical and winter storm elements and for its late October arrival creating nightmarish scenarios for Halloween-themed events, also created havoc for suppliers to the industry in regions ranging from Washington DC to Boston and extending as far inland as the Great Lakes. Its reach extended even farther for anyone in the industry attempting to fly to the Northeast, with more than 16,000 flights reported cancelled as of Oct. 30.
